"There was no spark of life in her face. Her cheeks were drained of color, she was not breathing," said Sidik, a former elementary school teacher who says she was forced to spend several months teaching at two detention centers in Xinjiang in 2017.
A policewoman who worked at the camp later told her the woman had died from heavy bleeding, though she didn't say what caused it. It was the first of many stories the policewoman would tell Sidik during the teacher's three-month assignment at the heavily-fortified building that housed female detainees.
According to Sidik, the policewoman claimed to have been assigned to investigate reports of rape at the center by her superiors, though CNN has no evidence of that claim. However, Sidik said what she heard and saw herself was so disturbing that it made her ill.